Port of Call is a shipping industry term referring to the stops that a vessel makes throughout its voyage. Its secondary and vernacular definition refers to “any of a number of places that a person visits in succession.” The adjacency of these term creates an analogy between humans and the infrastructure of global shipping. A Port is a location that is both transient and permanent. They are permanent fixtures to house impermanent vessels, goods, and bodies. Ports act as punctuation marks in the language of global infrastructures. These pauses and hesitations are the sites where human experience is sutured to that of cargo as it passes amongst locations. Port of Call seeks to locate how infrastructure constructs and shapes individual experience, sense of place, and conception of time. The exhibition channels this relationship through the lens of mediation and technology, material, labor, and memory. Port of Call visualizes the subjective traces of human presence in physical structures–both those that are highly visible and the unseen or forgotten–on personal and collective senses of place and identity.

A Perfect Measurement explores the idea of measuring that is used to define, categorize, and control the unknown. While methods of examining value have evolved throughout history, the origin of these systems and how they impact our lives have been seldom considered. To reveal the invisible side of defining and dividing, curator Jin Woo Chung (BFA 2019) brings together artists Seomy Ahn (MFA 2019), Cynthia (MFA 2019), Sujin Moon (MFA 2019), Cherrie Yu (MFA 2019), and Ji Su Kwak (BFA 2019), who all use conventionalized measuring systems in their work.

“Artificial Landscape addresses the relationship between the natural and digital worlds by bringing seven artists together. The rapid advancement of technology, which is used to produce art today, creates this connection between the natural and the technological. This leads to the creation and manipulation of an uncanny landscape of nostalgia. This relationship manifests through many different materials and approaches. There are artists, such as Sarah Rose, Minshuo Tang, and Terrell Davis, who attempt to re-create and distort what we consider to be the natural using technology. On the other hand, there are artists, such as Arne Asumai, Ji Su Kwak, and Phoebe Chin, who formulate an idealized nature born out of nostalgia and a longing to return to a certain time and space.”

“I am one of those people whose presence raises questions. I am very often greeted with, ‘where you from’ even in the town where I grew up. ...You’re in somebody else’s house. You are not in charge… Part of being from is an embodiment of what is thought to typify a place, a way of being. Ji Su Kwak reflects on her outside status with a deadpan gaze at someone else’s way of looking. She gathers snapshots from strangers. Who knows what they mean to the folks who took them. There is a sense of remove, a gap between a mnemonic device that recalls a memory and an image removed of its narrative content. We are left uncertain. The images feel familiar, more so because likenesses are lost in Ji Su’s simplifications. We have been there, made that gesture, shared a drink or the meal, gathered to be included in the group that was there. Pushing the shutter release defines the group, or reasserts its definitions. Drawing these images does something else. Asks questions about nostalgia more than steeping in it. Refuses to recognize. Sees from further away without actually being further away.

Amaranth Borsuk and Julie Wills wrestle with aphorisms. They uncover something about truth: it is locally produced. The tenor of moral declaration stems from familiarity rather than a self-evident quality. Amaranth and Julie address language in a call-and-response format, mirroring the malleability of things we hold so dear, so true, so foundational. When we are not in the place where values or identities come from, the inner workings of structures come into play, and with a bit of work that play can lead us to focus.

The approaches come together in the contradictions they share. The conflation of presence and absence. Uncovering ticks and tricks of letting in and keeping out. Longing to be inside when inside looks exactly like where you already are.”

Why is it important for us to remember the history of “comfort women”? How can we draw global attention to the issues more effectively? What can we do now to contribute to the conversation?

This roundtable discussion will examine the challenges and ways forward in promoting justice for “comfort women.” Anyone willing to share their thoughts and build a network of support in bringing awareness to the issues of “comfort women” is welcome!

A two-day symposium on "comfort women," referring to women across Korea, China, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Burma, and Indonesia who were sexually enslaved by the Imperial Japanese Army from 1932 to 1945.

The symposium will focus on the issues around "comfort women" in the context of international human rights with emphasis on art and activism for social justice. A central question this symposium will address is: what role does art play in addressing collective trauma? The mission of the symposium is to emphasize artistic practices as a powerful cultural tool that directs public impact towards a transnational movement for human rights.Necessary Discomfort: "Comfort Women" in Art & Activism Symposium Featured in FNewsmagazine

"Relocation is only a step (in a series of steps with unknown length) towards where I belong to."

Sparked by the ceaseless movement in and out of New York City, "send your location" embraces the act of migration charged by our restless ambitions. The exhibition celebrates the impulse and pursuit of artistic endeavors despite the nebulousness of relocation. The pop-up emphasizes the transient nature of its resident artists while flirting with the idea of permanence.

As imperfect beings, humans desire infinite potential despite their inevitably limited time and ability. Although we continuously frame ideas and eliminate the undefined in attempts to seek clarity, our lives remain as the continuum of equivocality. In such equivocality filled with the repetitive acts of categorizing and effacing, The Dispensables aims to reconsider categories/frames/distinctions per se.

The Dispensables occupies the transient, conceptual space where the distinctions between Art and Life, Persona and Ego, Idea and Reality are blurred. Through communications facilitated by this temporal blurring of distinctions, the presented objects and performances search for the meaning of perpetually equivocal life in the ephemerally ambiguous space – among prevalent uncertainty, what is “dispensable?”